The fate of one of Clatsop County’s larger child care centers is in question.
Peace First Early Learning Center serves more than three dozen children — ages 12 months to 12 years old — out of buildings in downtown Astoria owned by Peace First Lutheran Church. Now, the church plans to put the property on 12th and Exchange streets up for sale.
The learning center’s board, which operates under the church council, said they searched for alternative locations for months without success.
“Please know that this decision was not made lightly, and we explored all possible avenues to try to continue providing our services to your children,” the center’s leaders wrote in a letter to families in mid-May.
The early learning center is set to close on Aug. 30. The news caught Judi Lampi, the president of the church council, by surprise.
“The early learning center is so important to our community and our congregation,” she said.
Peace First is the result of a 2020 merger between two Lutheran churches, Peace Lutheran and First Lutheran. Lampi said the merged church could no longer afford to pay for the upkeep of two separate properties.
The church recently went through a long process of assessing facilities ahead of a congregational vote in January about what to do with the downtown property that houses the child care center.
“It was all so new there really wasn’t a discussion at that time about what’s going to happen to the early learning center,” Lampi said. She added, “Maybe we took a misstep there that we didn’t do this ahead of time.”
Time
There are still many more steps to take before the church officially lists the property. In Lampi’s mind, a decision like closing the early learning center didn’t need to happen immediately since it could take a while for the property, which includes two houses as well as the church building, to sell.
But Jim Randall, the board president for the early learning center, told KMUN that uncertainty is what drove their decision.
“Because how could we hire staff?” Randall said. “How could we enroll children and say, ‘yes, trust us with your child,’ but we might be closing next month, or we might be closing in five years?”
He said they wanted to give families time to figure out alternate care.
On Thursday, the center board and church board met again to address what Lampi believes was a communication breakdown.
Following that meeting, Catherine Bates, the early learning center’s executive director, said it is clear some members of the congregation support the day care and are working toward a solution to keep it open. It isn’t enough, yet, for the center to shift course.
Randall said he understands that selling the downtown property is probably a good financial decision for the church. Without a concrete solution on offer for where the early learning center could move, however, Randall said they will need to proceed with their decision to close.
The early learning center has been a presence in Astoria for decades. It opened downtown in 1988 as a ministry of Peace Lutheran Church. The announcement of its upcoming closure has dismayed city and county officials.
“It’s another reminder that this is a critical need in the community,” Astoria City Manager Scott Spence said. “And when we lose these institutional child care centers, it really puts a burden on all the residents.”
Clatsop County has struggled for years to offer adequate child care. The county has made some progress in creating options for preschoolers, but remains a “child care desert” for infants and toddlers. Employers often cite the county’s lack of housing and child care as barriers when they look to hire new employees.
The county has 13 certified child care centers. Peace First Early Learning Center is not the largest, but Eva Manderson, director of Northwest Regional Child Care Resource and Referral, estimates it is in the top five or six largest in the county.
“It’s possible that you’ll see families who can’t get into other care or can’t afford the other care that’s available out there,” Manderson said, “and they may make different employment decisions and that can have a wide ripple effect.”
Bumble, Astoria’s largest child care center with around 80 children, has been fielding calls from desperate Peace First families.
Amy Atkinson and Angie Jannusch, Bumble’s co-owners, say some have offered to pay over what Bumble charges just to try to secure a spot. But Bumble already has a waitlist.
“The preschool classes have a shorter waitlist,” Atkinson said, “but when you’re looking at infant and toddler spaces, you almost have to be on the list before the child is born.”
The county recently saw improvements in the number of child care slots available for 3- to 5-year-olds, pulling the county out of child care desert territory for that age group. With the closure of Peace First, Manderson expects those numbers will dip down again.
The coronavirus pandemic threw a spotlight on age-old issues with the availability and affordability of child care and its resilience as a business venture. In the glare, many people saw a need for more support — specifically government support.
Clatsop County has developed a grant program in an effort to better support existing programs and encourage new ones. Astoria made accommodations for Bumble so the center could more easily take over a city-run child care facility that city leaders determined they could not afford to operate. Gov. Tina Kotek has made restoring the state’s child care capacity and expanding and improving access to care one of her priorities.
Since the pandemic, Manderson said they’ve seen progress with individual programs.
“But,” she said, “there’s such a fragility to them that it’s really easy to upset the balance.”
Fragility
For Peace First Early Learning Center, one point of fragility is losing the church-owned buildings that house them rent-free.
Bates said they reviewed numerous possible alternatives. They couldn’t find anything in Astoria within their budget that would accommodate all the children they serve, allow them to keep costs relatively low for families or comply with state requirements for a day care facility without extensive and expensive renovations.
From Atkinson’s perspective, the county is not in a better place when it comes to child care. There may be more preschool options, but, she said, “in terms of full-day infant and toddler care, I don’t think that we’re in a better place because there’s not a huge incentive to be doing it. The cost is huge, so the risk is huge.”
The county’s grant program has been wonderful, she added, “but to start a robust program, funding isn’t really there or the infrastructure.”
Manderson said it isn’t surprising to have a child care operation shut down: It’s always a matter of time because the balance is so tenuous.
Still, she would not have predicted that Peace First would be the one to close.
If there’s a lesson to be learned — or a message — Manderson said it is that “the general public and the people that make decisions that touch child care programs really need to be aware of how delicately balanced things are.”